John rejoins triumphantly to discuss the industry’s latest shake-up. ArenaNet has opted to terminate the employment of two Guild Wars 2 writers following a heated exchange with a partnered streamer/YouTuber earlier in the month. He participates in this discussion while drinking water from a mason jar, as if his own real life is some kind of horror survival game.

This is more than the simple reactionary news coverage you’re seeing elsewhere around the game journosphere–and I think you’ll find we take quite the opposite perspective. If you focus on the chain of events instead of the political arguments being made by the parties involved, there are more than a few lessons to learn about protecting your career without sacrificing self-expression around the web.

Listeners will take from this discussion whatever they’re looking for. If you want to be offended about even asking if the writers in question could have avoided this, we can certainly help, but that’s far from the point. There’s a more important discussion to be had about the right boundaries to set when engaging your players, no matter who you are. The scenario we discuss here involves a woman who, indeed, seemed to field a lot of inappropriate commentary on various social media platforms. She also posts quite a few things I probably wouldn’t. Regardless, it would be difficult to argue that the player she finally snapped on was doing anything but being polite and sharing ideas.

As if this topic isn’t delicate enough, we explore the right and wrong approaches for engaging a community that largely doesn’t match your belief system. It can be done! This, after all, is how a valuable dialog begins.

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